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Thursday, 14 December 2017

Neoliberalism and Fascism

(This is part three of my essay entitled NEOLIBERALISM AND THE SOCIAL CONTRACT. The fourth part will be published soon.)

The role of the state

Unprecedented for a former president, on
10 December 2017 Barak Obama warned Americans not to follow a Nazi path. A
clear reference to president Trump and the Republican Party leading America in
that direction with rhetoric and policies that encourage ‘culture war’ (kulturkampf – struggle between varieties
of rightwingers from evangelicals to neo-Nazis against secular liberals), Obama made reference to socioeconomic
polarization at the root of political polarization.

“The
combination of economic disruption, cultural disruption ― nothing feels solid
to people ― that’s a recipe for people wanting to find security somewhere. And
sadly, there’s something in all of us that looks for simple answers when we’re
agitated and insecure. The narrative that America at its best has stood for,
the narrative of pluralism and tolerance and democracy and rule of law, human
rights and freedom of the press and freedom of religion, that narrative, I
think, is actually the more powerful narrative. The majority of people around
the world aspire to that narrative, which is the reason people still want to
come here."https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-warns-americans-against-following-in-the-path-of-nazi
germany_us_5a2c032ce4b0a290f0512487

Warning about the road to Nazism, Obama
drew distinctions between his brand of pluralist neoliberalism and Trump’s
rightwing populist model. Naturally, he did not mention that both models
operate under the same neoliberal umbrella and the policies for which Obama and
before him Bill Clinton pursued, driving a segment of the population toward the
authoritarian neoliberal model that offers the illusion of realizing the
American Dream. European political leaders embracing the
pluralist model under neoliberalism have been as condemnatory as Obama of
rightwing populism’s pursuit of ‘culture war’ as a precursor to Fascism.

Accusing Trump of emboldening varieties of neo-Fascists not just in the US
and EU but around the globe, European neoliberal pluralists ignored both the
deep roots of Fascism in Europe and their own policies contributing to the rise
of neo-Fascism. Just as with Obama and his fellow Democrats, European
neoliberal pluralists draw a very sharp distinction between their version of
neoliberalism, and rightwing populism. Ironically, neoliberal pluralists argue
that the rightwing populists violate some of the globalist integration
principles of the ideology by stressing economic nationalism.

Beyond the realm of political
and journalistic polemics intended to emphasize neoliberal differences where
few exist, as well as the dreadfulness of a Fascist regime’s policies, there
are differences and similarities between interwar Fascism and a number of
rightwing populist parties and regimes operating under the umbrella of
neoliberalism today. Benito Mussolini’s Fascism in Italy and Adolph Hitler’s Nazism
in Germany emerged as movements organized into political parties at the end of
WWI and after the Bolshevik Revolution when European capitalism was
experiencing a crisis and the US became the center of core capitalist countries.

Defeated in the war and
weakened economically, Italy and Germany as newly-established nation-states (1860
and 1870 respectively) were struggling to reassert their position in the world
economy, finding it difficult under a polarized parliamentary system, thus
turning to Fascist dictatorships under combined economic and sociopolitical
pressures. More closely integrated and growing, capitalism in the early 21st
century is experiencing a crisis in Western core countries. This is especially
in the US where capital over-accumulation resulting from parasitic sectors such
as speculative investment and ‘Military Keynesianism’ weakens the civilian
economy as deficit financing rises to maintain a global military presence.

Operating under the neoliberal
umbrella, rightwing populism emerged as a reaction to the prospect that the
center of global capitalism is shifting from the US to China, a frightening
prospect for many whom find hope in rightwing nationalist rhetoric. Whereas in
the middle of the 20th century the US enjoyed balance of payments
surpluses and was a net creditor with the dollar as the world’s strongest reserve
currency and the world’s strongest manufacturing sector, in 2017 the US is
among the earth’s largest debtor nations with chronic balance of payments
deficits, a weak dollar with a bleak future and an economy based more on parasitic
financial speculation and massive defense-related spending and less on
productive sectors that are far more profitable in Asia and developing nations
with low labor costs.

The recognition by the
political class and business class that over-accumulation is only possible by continued
downward income pressure on labor has invited populist rightwing or neo-fascist
solutions by a segment among some politicians and capitalists who view
neoliberalism as the panacea. Exerting enormous influence by exporting its neoliberal
ideological, political, economic and cultural influence throughout the world,
the US-imposed transformation model has often resulted in military
dictatorships and authoritarian regimes in Latin America, Africa and Asia. By
institutionalizing neoliberalism under rightwing populism on its soil, the US
has been leading Europe and other nations around the world to move closer to neo-Fascism.

Rejecting the claim of any
similarities between neoliberalism and Fascism, neoliberal apologists take
pride that their apparent goal is to weaken the state, by which they mean the
Keynesian welfare state, not the ‘military Keynesian’ and corporate welfare
state. By contrast, Fascists advocated a powerful state – everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against
the state. American neoliberals of both the pluralist and rightwing camps
have created a societal model not just in one nation like Mussolini and Hitler
but globally with the result of: “everything
within neoliberalism, nothing against neoliberalism, nothing outside
neoliberalism.

Whereas the
state structure has been strengthened in the US and advanced capitalist nations,
in the process of implementing neoliberal policies state bureaucratic functions
have been outsourced to private companies thus keeping with the spirit of corporate-welfare
goals. Contrary to the claims of many neoliberal scholars,
politicians and commentators, neoliberalism has not weakened the state simply
because the ideology lays claims to a hegemonic private sector and weak state.
It is true that the Keynesian-welfare state structure has been weakened while
the corporate-welfare-militarist-police-state structure has been strengthened.
However, in the less developed capitalist countries the public sector has
weakened as a result of the US and EU imposing the neoliberal model which
drains the public sector of any leverage in stimulating economic and social
development investment because of the transfer of public assets and public
services to the private sector.

Gaspar Miklos Tamas, Romanian political philosopher of the George
Lukacs-inspired Budapest School, argues that global division of labor in the
neoliberal era has diminished national sovereignty and citizenship for those in
less developed (periphery) nations. “The new
dual sate is alive and well: Normative State for the core populations of the
capitalist center, and another State of arbitrary decrees for the non-citizens
who are the rest. Unlike in classical fascism, this second State is only dimly
visible from the first. The radical critique protesting that liberty within the
Normative State is an illusion, although understandable, is erroneous. The
denial of citizenship based not on exploitation, oppression and straightforward
discrimination, but on mere exclusion and distance, is difficult to grasp,
because the mental habits of liberation struggle for a more just redistribution
of goods and powers are not applicable. The problem is not that the Normative
State is becoming more authoritarian: rather, that it belongs only to a few.”https://www.opendemocracy.net/people-newright/article_306.jsp

Miklos Tamas’ observation that the normative state is the domain of the
very few leads him to conclude that we are living in a global post-fascist era
which is not totalitarian and based on a mass movement as interwar Fascism but it
categorically rejects the Enlightenment tradition of citizenship which is the
very essence of the bourgeois social contract. While the normative state in
advanced countries is becoming more authoritarian with police-state
characteristics, the state in the periphery whether Eastern Europe, Latin
America or Africa is swept along by neoliberal policies that drive it toward
authoritarianism as much as the state in the EU and US.

It is not only the case where IMF austerity has been used as leverage to
impose neoliberalism in developing nations, but across the world considering
countries have been scrambling to attract foreign investment which carries the
neoliberal policies as a precondition. As Miklos Tamas argues, this has diluted
national sovereignty of weaker countries, allowing national capitalists and
especially multinational corporations to play a determining role in society
against the background of a weak state structure. Along with weakened national
sovereignty, national citizenship in turn finds expression in extreme rightwing
groups to compensate for loss of independence as the bourgeois social contract
presumably guarantees. (Aihwa Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations
in Citizenship and Sovereignty, 2006; http://www.e-ir.info/2012/08/22/globalization-does-not-entail-the-weakening-of-the-liberal-state/

It is undeniable that there is
a qualitative difference in Berlin and Rome under neoliberal regimes today than
it was under Fascism. It would be a mistake to lump a contemporary neoliberal
society together with the Third Reich and Fascist Italy, a dreadful and costly mistake
that Stalinists made in the 1930s. Interwar totalitarianism existed under
one-party state with a popular base operating as a police state. Although many
countries under varieties of neoliberal regimes have an electoral system of at
least two parties alternating power, the ruling parties pursue neoliberal
policies with variations on social and cultural issues (identity politics),
thus operating within the same policy framework impacting peoples’ living
standards.

Not just leftist academic
critics, but even the progressive democratic Salon magazine recognized
during the US election of 2016 that the neoliberal state would prevail
regardless of whether Trump or Clinton won the presidential contest. “Neoliberalism
presumes a strong state, working only for the benefit of the wealthy, and as
such it has little pretence to neutrality and universality, unlike the
classical liberal state.I would go so
far as to say that neoliberalism is the final completion of capitalism’s
long-nascent project, in that the desire to transform everything—every object, every living thing, every fact on the
planet—in its image had not been realized to the same extent by any preceding
ideology.

In neoliberal society either
of the pluralist variety or authoritarian capitalist, there are elements of polizeistaat though not nearly full
blown as in the Third Reich or Fascist Italy. While conformity to the status
quo and self-censorship is the only way to survive, modern means of
communication and multiple dissident outlets attacking the status quo from the
right that is far more pervasive and socio-politically acceptable than doing so
from the left has actually facilitated the evolution of the authoritarian state.
Moreover, whereas big business collaborated closely with Fascist dictators to
secure the preeminence of the existing social order threatened by the crisis of
democracy created by capitalism, big business under the neoliberal social
contract has the same goal, despite disagreement on the means of forging
political consensus. Partly because neoliberalism carries the legacy of late 19th
century liberalism and operates in most countries within the parliamentary
system, and partly because of fear of grassroots social revolution, a segment
of the capitalist class wants to preserve the democratic façade of the
neoliberal social contract by perpetuating identity politics. In either case,
‘economic fascism’ as the essence of neoliberalism, or post-fascism as Miklos
Tamas calls it, is an inescapable reality. (Andrea Micocci and Flavia Di Mario,
The
Fascist Nature of Neoliberalism, 2017).

In distinguishing the composition and goals of the bourgeois state vs.
the Fascist national state, Italian Fascism’s theoretician Giovanni Gentile
defined the state under the dictator Benito Mussolini as ‘totalitario’; a term also
applied to Germany’s Third Reich. Arguing that ideology in the Fascist totalitarian
state had a ubiquitous role in every aspect of life and power over people,
Gentile and Mussolini viewed such state as the catalyst to a powerful
nation-state that subordinates all institutions and the lives of citizens to
its mold. In “La Dottrina del Fascismo” (Gentile and Mussolini, 1932),
Musolini made famous the statement: "Everything
within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state," although it
was Germany that was far more totalitarian simply because it had the means to
achieve the goal.

The convergence of
neoliberalism and Fascism is hardly surprising when one considers that both aim
at a totalitarian society of different sorts, one of state-driven ideology and
the other market-driven with the corporate welfare state behind it. In some respects, Sheldon Wolin’s the “inverted
totalitarianism” theory helps to place this issue into perspective, arguing
that despite the absence of a dictator the corporate state behind the façade of
‘electoral democracy’ is an instrument of totalitarianism. Considering the
increased role of security-intelligence-surveillance agencies in a presumably
‘open’ society, it is not difficult to see that society has more illiberal than
classic liberal traits. Sheldon Wolin, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy
and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism,2008)

More powerful than the Axis
Powers combined, American “Inverted totalitarianism” was internationalized
during the Cold War and became more blatant during the war on terror used in
large measure to impose neoliberalism in the name of international security. As
the police-state gradually became institutionalized in every respect from
illegal surveillance of citizens to suppressing dissent to the
counterterrorism-neoliberal regime, it was becoming clearer to many scholars
that a version of fascism was emerging in the US which also sprang up around
the world. (Charlotte Heath-Kelly et al. eds., Neoliberalism and Terror:
Critical Engagements, 2016; https://deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/showthread.php?15074-Chris-Hedges-The-Great-Unraveling-USA-on-the-brink-of-neo-fascist-police-state#.WifwyLBrzIU

Almost a century
after the era of Fascist totalitarianism that led to WWII, the transition of capitalism’s global structure with a shifting core from
the US and northwest Europe to East Asia has entailed intense global
competition for capital accumulation to the degree that the advanced countries
have been pushing living standards downward to compete with low-wage global
markets. The process of the draining of greater surplus value from labor
especially from the periphery countries where IMF-style austerity policies have
resulted in massive capital transfer to the core countries has taken place
under the neoliberal social contract that has striking similarities to Fascism.
Backed by the state in the advanced capitalist countries, international
organizations among them the IMF have been promoting economic fascism under the
label of ‘neoliberal reforms’, thus molding state structures accordingly.
Neoliberal totalitarianism is far more organized and ubiquitous than interwar
Fascism not only because of the strong national state structure of core
countries, but because the international agencies established by the US under
the Bretton Woods system help to impose policies and institutions globally.

Characteristics of the Illiberal Neoliberal Society

Among the most common
characteristics of Fascism are ‘illiberal’, anti-democratic politics that
represent a departure from the classical liberal tradition of freedom and
tolerance for diverse ideological, political and cultural perspectives.
Characterized by elitism, class, gender, racial and ethnic inequality, limits
on freedom of expression, on human rights and civil rights, illiberal politics
thrives on submission of the masses to the status quo. While neoliberals in the
populist rightwing wholeheartedly share and promote such views, those who
embrace the pluralist-identity politics camp are just as supportive of many aspects
of the corporate welfare-police-counterterrorism state as a means to engender
domestic sociopolitical conformity and achieve closer global economic
integration.

The question is not so much
what each political camp under the larger neoliberal umbrella pursues as a
strategy to mobilize a popular base but whether the economic-social policies
intertwined with a corporate-welfare-police-counterterrorism state is the
driving force toward a Fascist model of government. In both the pluralist model with some aspects of the social safety net
and the rightwing populist version, neoliberalism’s goal is accumulation of
capital on a world scale as well as institutional submission of the individual,
molding the citizen’s subjective reality.

Illiberal
politics in our time is partly a reaction to neoliberal globalism and culture
wars that serve to distract from the obvious class struggle boiling beneath the
surface. Rhetorically denouncing globalist neoliberalism, populist rightwing politicians
assert the importance of national capitalism but always within the perimeters
of neoliberal policies. Hence they co-opt the socio-cultural positions
of nationalist extremists as a political strategy to mobilize the masses. Scholars,
journalists and politicians have speculated whether the rising tide of
rightwing populism pursuing neoliberalism under authoritarian models not just
in the Western World, but Eastern Europe, South Asia and Africa reflects the
rejection of liberal democracy and the triumph of illiberal politics that may
reflect and serve the political economy more faithfully. Unquestionably, there
is a direct correlation between the internationalization of the Western
neoliberal transformation model imposed on the world in the post-Soviet era and
the rise of rightwing populism reacting to the gap between the promises of what
capitalism was supposed to deliver and the reality of downward pressures on
living standards.http://www.counterfire.org/interview/18068-india-s-nightmare-the-extremism-of-narendra-modi;http://ac.upd.edu.ph/index.php/news-announcements/1201-southeast-asian-democracy-neoliberalism-populism-vedi-hadiz;http://balticworlds.com/breaking-out-of-the-deadlock-of-neoliberalism-vs-rightwing-populism/

Not just the US, but Europe
has been flirting with ‘illiberal democracy’ characterized by strong authoritarian-style
elected officials on an agenda of racism and ethnocentrism, misogyny,
anti-intellectualism, anti-parliamentary tendencies; all of it talking place
under the cover of an electoral system. Amid elections in Bosnia in 1996, US
diplomat Richard Holbrooke wondered about the rightwing path of former Yugoslav
republics. "Suppose the election was declared free and fair and those elected
are "racists, fascists, separatists, who are publicly opposed to [peace
and reintegration]. That is the dilemma." Twenty years after what
Holbrooke dreaded election outcomes in Yugoslavia, the US elected a rightwing
neoliberal populist leading the Republican Party and making culture wars a
central theme to distract from the undercurrent class struggle in the country.
This reality in America is symptomatic of the link between neoliberalism and
the rise of illiberal democracy in a number of countries around the world. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/1997-11-01/rise-illiberal-democracy

Some political observers
analyzing the rightist orientation of neoliberal policies have concluded that
neoliberalism and Fascism have more in common than people realize. In 2016,
Manuela Cadelli, President of the Magistrates Union of Belgium, wrote a brief
article arguing that Neoliberalism is indeed a form of Fascism; a position people
seem to be willing to debate after the election of Donald Trump pursuing
neoliberal policies with a rightwing populist ideological and cultural platform
to keep a popular base loyal to the Republican Party. “Fascism may be defined as the subordination of every part of the State
to a totalitarian and nihilistic ideology. I argue that neoliberalism is a
species of fascism because the economy has brought under subjection not only
the government of democratic countries but also every aspect of our thought.
The state is now at the disposal of the economy and of finance, which treat it
as a subordinate and lord over it to an extent that puts the common good in
jeopardy.”http://www.defenddemocracy.press/president-belgian-magistrates-neoliberalism-form-fascism/

It is ironic that although neoliberal society is ‘a species of fascism’,
there no widespread popular opposition from leftist groups partly because the
neoliberal pluralists have co-opted them. People remain submissive to the neoliberal
state that has in fact eroded much of what many in the pluralist camp hail as liberal
democratic institutions. Most people adapt to the status quo because to do
otherwise means difficulty surviving today just as it was difficult to survive
under Fascism for those in opposition. Because evidence of systemic
exploitation ingrained into society passes as the ‘norm’, and partly because
repression targets minority groups, migrants, and the working class, especially
those backing trade unions and progressive political parties, people support
the neoliberal state that they see as the constitutional entity.

The media, the government and mainstream institutions denounce anyone
crying out for social justice, human rights and systemic change. Such people
are ‘trendy rebels’, as though social justice is a passing fad like a clothing
line, misguided idealists or treasonous criminals. Considering that the media
validates the legitimacy of the neoliberal social contract, the political class
and social elites enjoy the freedom to shape the state’s goals in the direction
toward a surveillance police-state; and it all goes without notice in the age
when it is almost expected because it is defaulted to technology making easy to
detect foreign and domestic enemies while using the same technology to shape
the citizen’s identity.

Partly because of the
communications revolution in the digital age, neoliberalism has the ability to
mold the citizen beyond loyalty to the social contract not just into mechanical
observance but total submission to its institutions by reshaping the person’s
values and identity. In this respect, neoliberalism is not so different from
Fascism whose goal was to mold the citizen. “Neoliberalism has been more successful than most past
ideologies in redefining subjectivity, in making people alter their sense of
themselves, their personhood, their identities, their hopes and expectations
and dreams and idealizations. Classical liberalism was successful too, for two
and a half centuries, in people’s self-definition, although communism and
fascism succeeded less well in realizing the “new man.” It cannot be emphasized
enough that neoliberalism is not classical
liberalism, or a return to a purer version of it, as is commonly misunderstood;
it is a new thing, because
the market, for one thing, is not at all free and untethered and dynamic in the
sense that classical liberalism idealized it.

Although people go about their daily lives focused on their interests,
they operate against the background of neoliberal institutions that determine
their lives. While there is no problem for the elites and those in the more
affluent classes embracing the value system and way of life that neoliberal
offers, the same is not true for workers, women and minorities who are
marginalized by the institutional structure. As a panacea for society,
rightwing demagogues promise a tough policy on immigrants, making culture wars with
Muslims and pluralists advocating multiculturalism as the focus of society’s problem
rather than the neoliberal institutional structure.

As the world witnessed a segment of the population openly embracing
fascism from movement to legitimate political party in Europe during the past
two decades and a corresponding rise in racism and ethnocentrism, a number of
scholars and politicians have warned about Fascism becoming part of the
mainstream political arena. Representing the UN Human Rights agency, Prince
Zeid bin Ra’ad al-Hussein stated that 2016 was disastrous for human rights, as
the ‘clash of civilizations’ construct has become ingrained into the political mainstream
in Western countries. “In some parts of Europe, and in the United
States, anti-foreigner rhetoric full of unbridled vitriol and hatred, is
proliferating to a frightening degree, and is increasingly unchallenged. The
rhetoric of fascism is no longer confined to a secret underworld of fascists,
meeting in ill-lit clubs or on the 'deep net'. It is becoming part of
normal daily discourse.”http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/united-nations-chilling-warning-rise-fascism-human-rights-prince-zeid-a7464861.html

Because neoliberalism has
pushed all mainstream bourgeois political parties to the right, the far right
no longer seems nearly as extreme today as it did during the Vietnam War’s
protest generation who still had hope for a socially just society even if that
meant strengthening the social welfare system. Under the neoliberal social
contract to which the last two generations of people were born into and know no
alternative, the panacea for all that ails society is less social welfare and
more corporate welfare and privatization of public services within the
framework of a state structure buttressing corporate welfare. The idea that
nothing must be tolerated outside the hegemonic market and all institutions
must mirror the neoliberal model reflects a neo-totalitarian society where
sociopolitical conformity follows because survival outside the system is not
viable.

Although Western
neoconservatives have employed the term ‘neo-totalitarian’ to describe Vladimir
Putin’s Russia, the term applies even more accurately to the US and many
Western nations operating under neoliberal-military-police state structures
with far more power than the Russian state has at its disposal.The contradiction of
neoliberalism rests in the system’s goal of integrating everyone into the
neo-totalitarian mold. Because of the system’s inherent hierarchical structure,
excluding most from the institutional mainstream and limiting popular
sovereignty to the elites exposes the exploitation and repression goals that
account for the totalitarian nature of the system masquerading as democratic
where popular sovereignty is diffused. The seemingly puzzling aspect of the
rise in rightwing populism across the globe that rests in hatred and
marginalization of a segment of the population is the support not just from
certain wealthy individuals financing extremist movements, but a segment of the
middle class and even working class lining up behind it because they see their
salvation with the diminution of weaker social groups. This pattern was also
evident in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and pro-Nazi authoritarian regimes of
the interwar era. https://www.demdigest.org/neo-totalitarian-russia-potent-existential-threat-west/

Benjamin Moffitt, The
Global Rise of Populism (2017.

Because of
contradictions in bourgeois liberal democracy where capital accumulation at any
cost is the goal, the system produced the current global wave of rightwing populism
just as capitalism in the interwar era gave rise to Fascism.As one analyst put it: “The risk democratic formations continually
face is internal disintegration such that the heterogeneous elements of the
social order not only fail to come together within some principle of or for
unity, but actively turn against one another. In this case, a totally unproductive
revolution takes place. Rather than subversion of the normative order
causing suffering, rebellion or revolution that might establish a new nomos of
shared life as a way of establishing a new governing logic, the dissociated
elements of disintegrating democratic formations identify with the very power
responsible for their subjection--capital, the state and, the strong leader.
Thus the possibility of fascism is not negated in neoliberal formations
but is an ever present possibility arising within it. Because the value
of the social order as such is never in itself sufficient to maintain its own
constitution, it must have recourse to an external value, which is the order of
the sacred embodied by the sovereign.http://readersupportednews.org/pm-section/78-78/41987-neoliberalism-fascism-and-sovereignty/

Public opinion
surveys of a number of countries around the world, including those in the US,
indicated that most people do not favor the existing social contract rooted in
neoliberal policies that impact everything from living standards and labor
policy to the judicial system and foreign affairs. (Doug Miller, Can
the World be Wrong? 2015) Instead of driving workers toward a leftwing
revolutionary path, many support rightwing populism
that has resulted in the rise of even greater oppression and exploitation. Besides
nationalism identified with the powerful elites as guardians of the national
interest, many among the masses believe that somehow the same social contract
responsible for existing problems will provide the salvation they seek. At the
same time, widespread disillusionment with globalization seems to be at the
core in the rise of rightwing populism, though there are many other factors all
pointing right back to downward social mobility.

In a very thoughtful
article entitled “The Political Economy
of Neoliberalism and Illiberal Democracy” Garry Jacobs argues that: “A return to unbridled capitalism is
threatening the culture of liberal values and the functioning of democratic
institutions. Even mature democracies show signs of degenerating into their
illiberal namesakes. The historical record confirms that peaceful, prosperous,
free and harmonious societies can best be nurtured by the widest possible
distribution of all forms of power—political, economic, educational,
scientific, technological and social—to the greatest extent to the greatest
number. The aspiration for individual freedom can only be realized and
preserved when it is married with the right to social equality. The mutual
interdependence of the individual and the collective is the key to their
reconciliation and humanity’s future. http://www.cadmusjournal.org/article/volume-3/issue-3/political-economy-neoliberalism-and-illiberal-democracy

Just as
in the interwar era when many Europeans lost confidence in the rationalism of
the Enlightenment and lapsed into amorality and alienation that allowed for
even greater public manipulation by the hegemonic culture, in the early 21st
the neoliberal social contract with a complex matrix of communications at its
disposal is able to indoctrinate on a mass scale more easily than ever. Considering
the low level of public trust in the mainstream media that many view as
propaganda rather than information outlet, cynicism about national and
international institutions prevails. As the fierce struggle for power among
mainstream political parties competing to manage the state on behalf of capital
undercuts the credibility of the mainstream political class, rightwing elements
enter the arena as ‘outsider’ messiahs above politics (Bonapartism) to save the
nation, while safeguarding the neoliberal social contract. This is as evident
in France where the pluralist political model of neoliberalism has strengthened
the neo-Fascist one that Marine Le Pen represents, as in Trump’s America where
the Democratic party’s neoliberalism helped give rise to rightwing populism. https://www.globalresearch.ca/macronism-neoliberal-triumph-or-next-stage-in-frances-political-crisis/5596722; https://socialistworker.org/2016/12/05/the-18th-brumaire-of-trump

As the following article in The
Economist points out, widespread disillusionment with globalist
neoliberal policies drove people to the right for an enemy to blame for all the
calamities that befall society. “Beset by stagnant wage growth, less than half of
respondents in America, Britain and France believe that globalisation is a
“force for good” in the world. Westerners also say the world is getting worse.
Even Americans, generally an optimistic lot, are feeling blue: just 11% believe
the world has improved in the past year. The turn towards nationalism is
especially pronounced in France, the cradle of liberty. Some 52% of the French
now believe that their economy should not have to rely on imports, and just 13%
reckon that immigration has a positive effect on their country. France is
divided as to whether or not multiculturalism is something to be embraced. Such
findings will be music to the ears of Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National
Front, France’s nationalist, Eurosceptic party. Current (and admittedly early)
polling has her tied for first place in the 2017 French presidential race. https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/11/daily-chart-12

Similar to deep-rooted
cultural and ideological traits of Nazism in German society, there are
deep-rooted cultural and ideological traits in France, the US, India, and other
countries where rightwing populism has found a receptive public. Although there
are varieties of populism from Lepenism (Marine Le Pen’s National Front) to Trumpism (US Republican Donald
Trump) to Modism (India’s Narendra Modi), they share common characteristics,
including cult of personality, promoting hatred and marginalization of certain
minority groups, and promising to deliver a panacea to “society” when in fact
their policies are designed to strengthen big capital.

The popular base of rightwing
populists seeks salvation by demanding the marginalization of a segment of
society invariably the more oppressed and exploited. The focus is not on the
structure of exploitation and oppression, but on restraining workers, refugees,
environmentalists, and minority communities projected as the root cause of all problems
in society. Rightwing populist politicians who pursue neoliberal policies are
opportunistically pushing the political popular base toward consolidation of a
Fascist movement and often refer to themselves as movement rather than a party.
Just as there were liberals who refused to accept the
imminent rise of Fascism amid the parliamentary system’s collapse in the 1920s,
there are neoliberals today who refuse to accept that the global trend of
populism is a symptom of failed neoliberalism that has many common
characteristics with Fascism.

In an article
entitled “Populism is not Fascism: But it
could be a Harbinger” by Sheri Berman, the neoliberal journal Foreign
Affairs, acknowledged that liberal bourgeois democracy was losing its
luster around the world. However, the author would not go as far as to examine
the structural causes for this phenomenon because to do so would be to attack
the social contract within which it operates. Treating rightwing populism as
though it is a marginal outgrowth of mainstream conservatism and an aberration rather
than the outgrowth of the system’s core is merely a thinly veiled attempt to
defend the status quo of which rightwing populism is an integral part.

"A
gripping, passion-filled, and suspenseful tale of love, betrayal,
political and religious intrigue, this novel entices the reader’s
senses and intellect beyond conventions. Slaves to Gods and Demons
takes the reader through a roller coaster enthralling journey of
personal trials and triumphs of a family emerging vanquished and
destitute after World War II.

Narrated by a young boy, Morfeos, modeled after the Greco-Roman pagan
deity of sleep and dreams, the book reveals the soul of a people trying
to ascertain and assert their identity while rebuilding their lives and
recapturing the glory of a lost civilization.

Seeking liberation from restraints of time, social conventions, and
binding traditions, the deity of dreams provides the conformist and the
free-spirited characters in the novel with venues for redemption that
are mere paths toward illusions. Exploring the complexities of human
relationships shaped by priest and politician alike, the novel rests on
the central theme that life is invariably a series of illusions, some
of which are euphoric, most horrifying, all an integral part of daily
existence.

Striving for purpose amid life’s absurdities after the destruction of
western civilization in two global wars, the characters in Slaves to
Gods and Demons struggle between holding on to the glory and grandeur of
a pagan legacy and the Christian present shaped by contemporary
secular events in Western Civilization."